Smile
by Domlando Blonaghan
Summary: Cho wonders why she always sees him smiling. Even now that he's gone. Angsty.


_**Smile: A Cedric/Cho oneshot**_

It's funny. Every time I see him now, when my mind brings an image of him floating to the forefront of my thinking, he is always smiling. Sometimes it's that little half-smile, the one made just for me after a quiet moment in a deserted corridor. No matter what happened behind the tapestries, it would always feel innocent when he would break away from our embrace, looking down and letting that little smile peek bashfully out at me.

Sometimes his grin explodes into my thoughts and won't relinquish its control over me. His grin. I don't know if you ever saw it, but it was devastating. It made his eyes crinkle and showed off his perfect teeth and you could hear the girls sigh in the corridor when one of his mates would tease him. But he never noticed. When he saw me acting tense one day as we walked together, he asked me why. I told him, and he only grinned, tilting my face up to his with a finger on my chin and kissed me, right there in the hallway, in front of all the sighing girls. He whispered that I had nothing to worry about.

I begged to differ. I had four threatening letters sitting on my bed when I came back from supper that night. All anonymous of course. I sat beside him at breakfast the next day and played with his hair, running my fingers through the boyish waves that were so soft to touch. That no one else would ever get to touch.

His laugh, though, was wonderful. Before I knew him I used to wonder why he was so magnetic. Yes, he was handsome, and kind, and generous and loyal. But all of that didn't explain why everyone was _drawn_ to him. And one day, I saw him lying on the grass by the lake with a group of his mates, and one of them said something to make him laugh. It was boyish in a sweet, choky way, and at the same time it ran out around the lake. And then I knew that it would be worth being close to him just to hear him laugh.

During the Yule Ball, the Weird Sisters were playing one of their most popular songs, and I started to sing it at the top of my lungs. We were dancing wildly, throwing our bodies around and waving our arms and pressing our bodies against one another, but all of our inhibitions were gone because of the crowd and the noise and the sparkling room and our fancy clothes, and when he heard me singing off-key, he laughed that beautiful laugh.

And then I grabbed him, and kissed him.

Well, I more sort of crashed into his lips, but he saved it, drawing it out and slowing it down, and we just stood in the middle of the dance floor surrounded by gyrating, sweaty fourth-years, just snogging, until Moody tapped Cedric on the shoulder and wagged a finger at him, whirling his magical eye everywhere. Cedric blushed, and dragged me off the dance floor.

It was the most romantic night of my life.

But he wasn't always smiling, of course. People who smile all the time are boring and usually quite dim. There were loads of times when he was serious and calm and sombre. Before the Third Task when I kissed him goodbye, he looked quite grim, and when I concentrate hard I can remember the way his jaw was set and his eyes looked darker. He was so intent. And of course, after the Third Task, when his body appeared, cold and lifeless in the stadium with his eyes wide and staring, greeted by the screams of the crowd, he was also unsmiling. But If I'm not concentrating on him or thinking about him, his smiling face is sure to come up in my thoughts.

Sometimes I hate him, and those are the times that I am the most inconsolable. Because it was impossible to hate Cedric. He was beautiful and kind and brave and strong. But sometimes, I do. For leaving me here, for making me deal with it all on my own, for being so happy all the time in my mind's eye while I sit on the floor of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom and cry.

Those are also the times when I hate myself the most, too. Because I'm not strong or brave, and I'm not as beautiful or as kind as he was. And I only curse him because of my own weakness, because I need him to help me get through this, but he is the only one who isn't around. He is the one person in the world who would continue to be patient with my constant melancholy, and yet he is the cause of it. And that's what makes me hate him, and my own weak, silly self.

But most days, most moments, I love him. I don't think I loved him when he was alive. We never had unbridled passion or lust for one another, like Fred Weasley and Angelina Johnson, who finally got over their denial. But now, looking back, I maybe just didn't see what was there. Or maybe I've built him up in my imagination so much that I don't even know what I feel or might have felt.

Either way, all of this is useless. I have to keep living my life. I'm wasting away, everyone says so. Everyone sees it, how much this is crushing me. At least, though, I'll always have his smiles. The grins, the half-smiles, the boyish laugh that was contagious as much from the sound as it was because it came from him. I'll always have thoughts of him floating around in my head. And best of all, he'll always be smiling. Maybe if I study him enough, think about him enough, I might learn how to smile again, too.

* * *

**A/N: This came to me in a feverish haze (And I mean literally because I am soo sick). So let me know if it's any good, will you?**

**Inspired by the movie GoF, which got my HP muse going again after a long hiatus. And I love Mike Newell for making the best HP movie yet, and for not slaughtering GoF.**


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